"Hope is my catalyst."

The 54th Deadline: Something never becomes anything unless it has a beginning and end.

Lately, I have been realizing I have a peculiar problem I need to fix – I don’t finish what I start as much as I would like.

It’s all been too apparent for me.

For example, I had a smoke detector in my room that was beeping because the battery was dying. I went to the store and bought a new battery. It took me a week or so to replace the dead battery so I could have a functioning smoke detector again, even though I had it all right in front of me.

It’s such a random thing. Literally, getting the smoke detector all set up took less than 30 seconds when I finally just finished the task. It wasn’t hard or anything like that. I just put it off. Still, it was a week of procrastinating before I finally got it done. And thank goodness a fire did not break out in my place during that whole week.

The whole point is, this kind of procrastination is not uncommon or anything. It’s in the same vein when you’re a student and you have assignments you need to finish.

You keep putting things off, you keep telling yourself you will do this at this point, then you keep setting it aside and then it’s been a long time before you realize you should just have it all done already.

Procrastination is just a natural occurrence. It just creeps up at the worst times.

Now, more importantly, when you consider this procrastination for other projects I have had in the works for a long while, it’s just been apparent how counterproductive I have been with my time.

And I realize I have had a lot of life-altering situations that would of course affect how much time and effort I could invest toward a given project.

After all, survival comes first. But regardless, I don’t want to survive all of the time. I want to thrive. And in a big way.
It’s something I had to come to grips with when I was talking to my good friend about this. I will admit I am technically working a wage-slave job by all means at the moment.

I feel like I work so hard, but I don’t make that much. And it’s clear I won’t get ahead in terms of finances for a really long time.

But that’s OK for now.

I enjoy my job as an aspiring chef. It’s still a passion of mine to learn how to be great at cooking. However, my other interests cannot be ignored either.

For me to make all of my dreams come true, I need to finish what I start. I need to get some finished products done at some point. Otherwise, at this rate, it’s going to be the same thing over and over again.

I begin, I work on something for a while, something else comes up and then I set it aside to wait in the wings until I get to it again. And again could be days, weeks, months or even more. It’s like an ongoing, inefficient cycle that loops around and around, and I have been too caught up with surviving that I have not put a stop to it.

Old habits die hard, though. Don’t get me wrong. I know I have not been the most efficient and diligent person in my life. Even as a kid, I had my share of assignments I did not get around to until the very last minute.

But I am an adult now, and unless I want to become too old to accomplish what I want to do with my life, I have to attempt making something stick for the long term.

In a sense, I feel like I have been neglecting my own creations. I have been a lousy content creator in the works when I cannot even hold myself accountable. Seriously, I need to stay on task when it just boils down to pure discipline to do what needs to be done.

So why haven’t I been working on my stuff as much as I could? Why do I keep making stupid excuses? I’m a smart guy when I want to be, but I haven’t been acting smart. That’s the main aspect for my current problems with procrastination.

Why can’t I just light a fire under my own butt to ignite the spark to press onward? Am I too tired? Am I too lazy? And for that, I don’t like myself for I haven’t done enough of for these past few years. I don’t have anyone else to blame but myself. It’s tough to be so truthful, but it needs to be said.

The beginning was rough. I had lost a lot of my own identity. I didn’t really know what I wanted to believe in, let alone what I should have been doing in a pinch to make ends meet.

For that, life punished me. Life set me back. Well, to be more accurate, I set myself back by a lot. So how can I address this? How can I counteract all of the dillydallying?

I think I need to start small to get the good habits developed. I need to rekindle what lost passion I once had when I was just a naive, but struggling individual who couldn’t get out of his parents’ basement until push really came to shove.

I was a mess back then, but within that disarray that was my mind, I had a lot of worthwhile ideas that I still believe in to this day. They just all have been lost in the shuffle as I continue to find the elements missing in my life to make myself feel more whole and enriched as a person.

I tell myself that I don’t want to live a paycheck-to-paycheck existence for the rest of my days. I don’t want to die not being remembered. I want to leave my mark in this world, never to be forgotten by history and to make a real impact in the lives of others.

But alas, at least for the time being, I have a lot of unfinished products that need some love. I have to see them through to the end. It’s only right.